


The Bride Who Stopped Running

by unfolded73



Series: The Lostverse [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 16:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10643241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Originally published May 2009,Donna meets and falls in love with her future husband in the Lostverse, and is faced with the choice between him and her life on the TARDIS.





	1. The Lever Room

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jfiliberti, who requested the story of Donna falling in love with Phil (the man she marries in No Rest from Sound) in the Lostverse. jfiliberti won my services during the Support Stacie Fanfic Auction, April 2009. Note that this fic was written before the introduction of the character Shaun Temple in "The End of Time." **WARNING: This fic contains descriptions which might be disturbing to those for whom 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center is a sensitive subject.**

Donna pulled herself up out of the TARDIS pool and sauntered over to grab the large, fluffy towel off of her deck chair. She’d come to favour an early-morning swim of late, at least on mornings when they were on the TARDIS and not in a prison cell on an alien planet or camped out under the stars in ancient Greece.

After heading back to her bedroom to shower and change, Donna made for the kitchen. She picked up the murmur of voices as she approached, and upon entering the room was presented with the tableau of Rose perched on the Doctor’s lap where he sat at the table. Their mouths were locked together and the Doctor’s hand was splayed over Rose’s bum. Donna rolled her eyes and went over to the coffee machine. The sound of beans being ground was loud in the cosy space, and had the desired effect, as when Donna glanced back at her travelling companions they were in two separate chairs.

Not that their public displays of affection really bothered her; if they did, she wouldn’t have spent two and a half years travelling with them. She loved Rose and the Doctor both. They were the closest friends she’d ever had, and the fact that they were madly in love with each other didn’t change that fact.

Once they were all sitting down and tucking into their breakfasts, the Doctor posed the question that he had a hundred times before: “So, where to today, do you think? Future? Past?”

“Future,” Rose said decisively. “We’ve been doing a lot of pre-indoor plumbing trips lately.”

“Mind if we pop home for a visit first?” Donna asked as she smeared marmalade on some toast. “I’d like to see Granddad.”

“Of course,” the Doctor answered. 

Donna’s grandfather had aged considerably in the last year or so, and she was starting to worry that his time was growing short. He wasn’t sick precisely, but he was definitely getting a bit more frail every time she saw him. He wasn’t going up the hill at night any more to look at the stars, and that worried her more than anything else. As a result, they had been visiting Earth more frequently, the Doctor seeming to understand that it was what Donna needed. Rose was enjoying the regular trips to her home planet as well, even though she no longer had family there. After they finished with breakfast, the Doctor took her home.

Strolling up the walk to her front door, Donna marvelled at the emerging signs of spring: small buds on previously-barren tree limbs and green blades of grass appearing among the brown grass of winter. She took a deep breath. She had been so many magical places and times, all over the universe, but it never lessened her appreciation of home.

Her granddad met her at the door with a hug, and she could feel slight tremors in his hands as they rested on her back. With a worried frown, she followed him into the sitting room and watched as he slowly lowered himself into his favourite chair, breathing a bit heavier than was warranted.

”What do you hear from the stars lately, my girl?” he asked, as he always did.

”Oh, you know, same old. We went to a planet last week with a very large population of different sorts of migratory birds. If you go at the right time, you can see thousands of them together, flying in formation. It was amazing. You have to wear a rain slicker, though, because of the droppings. That part was disgusting.” Donna always came prepared with a few innocuous stories like this, ones that didn’t involve danger or near-death experiences.

She tried to listen patiently as her grandfather talked about what was on telly and what nonsense diet her mother had put him on that week and what recent move in the government he thought could be ascribed to aliens. When a rapid knock came at the door, she realized with no small amount of guilt that she had started to tune him out.

She opened the door on Rose and the Doctor and he spoke only one word: “Trouble.”

 

***

 

“But, the Battle of Canary Wharf, that was years ago, before we met!” Donna protested as the three of them descended into the Chiswick Park Tube station. “Why is this happening now?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor said tightly, punching buttons on a mobile phone. “Gah, wrong number,” he said after a moment.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Rose suggested. “Maybe it’s a natural, you know, seismic phenomenon, and it happens to be affecting Torchwood Tower.”

“A natural seismic phenomenon affecting only one building?” the Doctor asked, groaning at the phone and punching a button. “I hate these menus.”

“That mobile’s not going to work down here, mate,” called a passerby. 

“Yeah, ta,” the Doctor said, continuing to listen and press buttons. Donna smirked; all three of them had mobile phones that worked at the far reaches of the galaxy; being underground in London was hardly a cause for concern. “Besides,” the Doctor added, “I checked. Nothing remotely resembling an earthquake in the last several months.” A relatively empty train pulled into the station and the three of them boarded, taking seats near the door.

Finally, something positive seemed to happen with the Doctor’s phone call. “Hello, UNIT headquarters? This is the Doctor, can you ... all right. ... Hello ... yes, Colonel, thank you.... I need you to listen. Are your people monitoring Torchwood Tower? ... Well, whatever it’s called, are you monitoring it? Because according to the TARDIS scanners, there’s some kind of instability in the structure and given the history, I think we have a reason to be concerned, don’t you?” He listened for a while, and as Donna watched, his expression darkened. “Yes, I know exactly how long it’s been since the battle, Colonel, I was there,” the Doctor said, his voice betraying his anger. Rose reached over to give his hand a squeeze. “I’m on my way there now; I suggest you send a team.” He clicked the phone off and angrily shoved it into his pocket.

“Why aren’t we taking the TARDIS again?” Donna asked as she watched the doors open at another station.

“Because I don’t know what we’re going to find there. If there’s some rogue remnant of Torchwood One still in existence, I’m not going to announce my presence by bringing the TARDIS to their doorstep.”

“We talked to Jack while we were on our way over to yours,” Rose explained. “He doesn’t know anything about any activity in Canary Wharf. According to his research, the building has been split up and rented as office space to an assortment of companies, but it’s still at least half-empty.”

When they changed trains, Rose looked around them and frowned. “Why is it so deserted?” There were a fair number of people in the station, but fewer than you’d see during a typical morning commute.

“It’s a bank holiday,” said Donna.

“That’s good,” the Doctor said. “Not as many people in those skyscrapers.” 

They finally arrived at their destination, announced by the soothing tones of the automated female voice. “This is Canary Wharf. Change here for the DLR. This train terminates at Stratford.” The station was all gleaming chrome and glass, but the Doctor didn’t spare it a glance as he dashed to the endlessly long escalator, dodging commuters and bounding up, leaving Rose and Donna struggling to keep pace.

Donna had never liked the press of tall skyscrapers in this part of London, even if everything was shiny and still relatively new. She followed the Doctor and Rose into Canary Wharf Tower with her head down and her eyes on her feet, dodging people who rushed here and there to their jobs in spite of the holiday, oblivious to what might be lurking in their posh office building.

The three of them got on the lift. It was a fifty-story building, but the numbered buttons only went up to forty, above which a metal plate appeared to have been welded in place. The Doctor punched the 30 and set to work on the plate with the sonic screwdriver. At floor 28 the plate came off. At floor 30, the doors opened and two other people got on, pressing the button for 33. The Doctor waited until they got off, then pressed 50.

When the doors opened, Donna was the first one out. She heard the Doctor murmur something to Rose, and she looked back to see him leading her off the lift. Both of them looked decidedly unhappy. “So what are we doing up here, then?” Donna asked. The Doctor got out his sonic screwdriver and adjusted the settings, then headed off silently down the hallway.

This floor was deserted, but obviously someone had at least cleaned the place up after the battle. There was no sign that anyone had died here, although perhaps the deaths had been mostly on the lower floors anyway. Donna felt a shiver run down her spine; she might have been oblivious at the time, but she’d heard and read enough about the Battle of Canary Wharf since then to understand the threat that Earth had been under, and it had all originated here. She followed the Doctor through a pair of doors, close on his heels.

They were standing in a large white room. If there had ever been any furniture or computers here they were long gone, sold off when Torchwood One was closed by order of the Queen. The only thing to break up the monotony of the white were two large levers set into to the floor. _Levers,_ Donna thought, _why is that familiar ...? Oh._ The Doctor had always been vague about the exact story, but Rose had told it all to her once. This was where it happened, Donna thought. In this very room.

She looked over at the Doctor and Rose. He was cupping her face in his hands, speaking very quietly, with such tenderness in his expression that Donna suddenly felt like she was intruding on a very intimate moment. Looking away, she walked over to the white wall at one end of the room and touched it. There was no sign to her eyes that there had been a hole in the universe right here. No sign of the heartbreak that it had brought to her best friends.

“Right!” the Doctor said with false cheer. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?” He pulled a device out of his pocket, one of those things he tended to build which looked like it was held together with chewing gum and random bits of wire, and began scanning the white wall with it. Rose appeared to be torn between staying close to the Doctor and being far away from the wall. When Donna wandered over to the other end of the room to look out the window, Rose joined her.

“They repaired these windows,” Rose said softly. “This is where the Daleks crashed through.”

“It must be difficult for you to be here,” Donna said.

“I’m fine. I mean, it does bring it all back, but … I’m okay.” She drew herself up to her full height. “It was a long time ago, and it’s over.”

“Nononononono. No.” The Doctor was pulling at his hair with one hand as he read his instrument. “Why didn’t I see this coming? I’m _thick_!”

Both women turned to him. “Doctor, what is it?” Rose asked in a tremulous voice. “Is it the breach?”

“No, the breach is closed, it’s fine.” He looked up at them. “When the Void ship came through here, it brought more than Cybermen in its wake. It brought Rhessian radiation.”

Donna frowned. “It brought _what_?”

“Rhessian radiation.” He was pacing around in a manic frenzy, his hand in his hair again. “Which is a problem, because the subatomic particles that make it up don’t belong in this dimension.” His teeth were bared as he spoke, the words tumbling out as they did when his brain was spinning faster than his mouth could move. “They have no counterparts here, they can’t react with an electron or a proton and decay to something harmless. In this dimension, Rhessian radiation just stays. In this case, in the steel girders of this building.”

“But wouldn’t it just … disperse?” Rose asked, looking around nervously as if it were something she could see.

“Some of it did. But most of it got sequestered in nearby metal.” He approached them. “It’s like this. There are different types of radiation emitted by radioactive isotopes here on Earth. And you might think that the most damaging to the human body would be gamma radiation, because it has the highest energy. But you would be wrong; gamma radiation just goes right through you, whoom!” He gestured quickly at Donna, making her jump. “Whereas alpha particles, you can stop them with a sheet of paper; harmless, right? But once they get inside you, if you were to absorb radioactive material through your skin or ingest it, the particles get into your cells just rattle around and around and around, doing loads of damage.”

“And that’s what’s happening to this building?” Rose asked. “That radiation is rattling around?”

“Yup. It has a particular affinity for the steel. Oh, it might only degrade a handful of atoms each minute, but it’s been years.” He dropped his manic visage. “This building is a death trap.”

“All those people down there,” Donna whispered. “Hang on, are we safe from the radiation?”

The Doctor dismissed her question with a wave. “We’re fine, we haven’t been here that long, and the people who work here are far enough below that it probably didn’t affect them either. But the radiation isn’t what we need to worry about.” He took out his sonic screwdriver and ran it along the walls and floor. “The thing about a structure like this is, there’s a critical point. One minute it’s strong enough to support itself …” At that moment, Donna could hear a screeching, like the tearing of metal, under their feet, followed by a rumble that reverberated through her body. “And the next minute, it isn’t.”


	2. Escape from Torchwood Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions which might be disturbing to those for whom 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center is a sensitive subject.**

“Oh my _God!_ This building is falling down!” Donna shouted.

“Yeah, Doctor, don’t you think we should get out of here?” Rose asked nervously.

“Take the stairs, not the lift. Get as many other people out as you can.” At that moment, his mobile rang and he pulled it out of his pocket quickly. “Yes, Colonel? … Well, of _course_ I was right. … Excellent, that’s what I was hoping you would do.” He clicked the phone off. “UNIT is sending teams over to evacuate this building and the surrounding ones.”

“And what are _you_ going to do?” Rose asked.

“I’ve got to neutralize this radiation, or it might continue to spread. It won’t take more than … fifteen minutes, tops? I’ll be fine. You two need to start the evacuation below.” There was another rumble to punctuate his instructions.

“No way. I am _not_ leaving you in this building, you must be mad if you think I am. I’ll tie myself to you if I have to.” Rose was clearly furious.

The Doctor expelled breath on a heavy sigh. “Fine. Donna, someone needs to start getting people out, can you do that?”

“On my way,” she said, already pulling open the door. “You two be careful!”

“Don’t take the lift!” she heard the Doctor shout as she stepped into the hallway. 

“I _know_ that,” Donna grumbled as she dashed for the stairwell. “Fifty floors. Blimey, why couldn’t Torchwood have built a big, sprawling three-story building in the suburbs?” 

By the time she reached floor 40, which was the first occupied one, she was already out of breath, and had heard several more ominous sounds of tearing metal. Fire alarms had started to go off, and people were milling around in confusion in the hallway. “Get out of the building!” Donna shouted to anyone within earshot. “This isn’t a drill; this building is unsafe!” She grabbed a woman who looked like an administrative assistant. “Is there an intercom? A way to make an announcement to the building?”

“My firm is only this floor and the one below,” she said, looking scared but competent. “That’s the best I can do.” 

“It’s better than nothing. Do it, then get to the stairwell and get out.” Donna ran back the way she came and headed down to floor 38, repeating her shouted warnings, but there was almost no one around – obviously these employees got bank holidays off. As she was on her way back to the stairwell, she collided with a tall man, and felt the splash of warm liquid across her shirt. He grabbed for her elbow as she rebounded off of him, barely stopping her from hitting the floor.

“Oi!” Donna shouted, brushing ineffectually at the stain on her blouse and looking at the mostly empty coffee mug in the man’s other hand. 

“Sorry,” he said, reaching toward her chest and then thinking better of it.

“This is an _evacuation_ ,” Donna said scathingly. “Did you really think it was a good time for a coffee?”

He shrugged and grinned guiltily. “I hadn’t had my coffee yet, thought I might drink it on my way down.”

Donna stared at him. “Are you _daft?_ The _building is falling down!_ You can’t meander down the stairs drinking coffee, you have to run. Come on!” she said, pulling on his hand as the coffee mug dropped to the carpet behind them. She hit the door to the stairs with her free hand and hurtled down to the next landing.

“What firm are you with?” the man asked as they ran. 

Donna rolled her eyes. “I don’t work here, I’m helping to get people out.” A loud stomping and clattering came from the stairs below them and as they rounded the next landing, they came face to face with a group of men and women in red berets and black uniforms. “Oi, you lot!” Donna shouted. “I’m Donna Noble, I’m here with the Doctor, is there anything you need me to help you with?”

They all simultaneously snapped a salute at her. “We’ve got it under control, ma’am, just get out as fast as you can.” They ran past her, so Donna continued on, the stairs becoming a bit more crowded as they met up with other evacuees.

“I’m Phil Wyeth, by the way,” the man said from behind her on the stairs.

“Donna,” she said shortly, not really interested in making conversation while they ran for their lives. She felt another tremor in the building, stronger than before, and she spared a moment to pray that the Doctor and Rose would be all right.

“Yes, Donna Noble, I heard. You don’t look like a general, but they sure treated you like one.”

Donna smirked. “I’m a civilian, I just travel in important company.”

“Why is the building falling down?” Phil asked.

“Apparently it’s been falling down very, very slowly since the Battle of Canary Wharf. Today was just the last straw.”

“You know, I always worried about that, moving into this building afterward. But the rents were so cheap, on account of what happened, I suppose it was impossible for my firm to resist.”

Donna looked at the number on the door as they hurried past. 27 – almost half-way there. “What do you do?” she asked, trying not to audibly pant.

“I’m in patent law,” Phil said.

“Fascinating,” Donna remarked, too winded to hide her sarcasm.

“Well, d’you know, we can’t all … travel in important company. And it actually _is_ fascinating, as it happens.”

She glanced back at him. “Fair enough.” The building gave another deafening screech and then it shook, making Donna feel like she was in an earthquake. The people around them screamed and began trying to move faster. Donna started to worry what would happen to anyone who fell down. She couldn’t imagine how bad things would be had the building been full.

At floor 22 things became more orderly again, as UNIT soldiers were spaced out on each landing, urging people not to panic and assisting anyone who seemed to be labouring with the long descent. At floor 16, Phil began speaking again.

“You live here in London?”

“Not most of the time, no, but my family’s here. My mum and granddad.”

“So where are you most of the time?”

“All over. I travel a lot.” It was the vague answer she was used to offering to her acquaintances on Earth.

The building gave another groan, and what sounded almost like bombs exploding reached their ears. The lights went out, leaving only reddish emergency lighting to see by.

“Is it terrorists?” A woman near them asked, near panic.

“I promise, it isn’t terrorists,” Donna responded, but she didn’t think the woman heard her.

“It was probably girders snapping,” Phil said. “We need to get out of here _now_.”

Donna glared at him. “That’s what I told you twenty floors back!”

“Right, right, yes.” 

The stairwell was sweltering; any air circulation had obviously stopped functioning. Donna panted, desperate for some water, and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. At least the crowd of people was moving relatively swiftly.

Floor 8, and the shaking was worse; they started to be able to see the damage. The walls seemed out of true, with large cracks appearing even as Donna looked at them. One particularly large cracking sound made Donna turn around, and she just managed to yank Phil, who had stopped and was staring up, out of the way before a large piece of masonry crushed his skull.

“Ta,” he gasped. 

“Just run, you idiot.”

Floor 5, and emergency lighting failed, leaving them entirely in the dark. There were screams, and Donna felt someone beside her fall. She reached out, but couldn’t grab hold of anything. The air was getting thick with dust, and Donna coughed violently. She felt one of her hands grabbed and pulled. 

“Come on, Donna, we’re almost there.” It was Phil. Someone had turned on some torches – the UNIT soldiers, probably – and Donna could see again, just enough to shuffle down the increasingly uneven stairs.

“Someone fell back there, one floor up,” she called to the first red beret she saw, her voice hoarse and scratchy. “They might need help.”

Finally, they spilled out into the lobby. What had been glittering and posh only an hour before was almost unrecognizable. Donna gripped Phil’s hand and ran, stumbling over fallen debris. Together they hit the doors and spilled out onto the pavement. 

Donna couldn’t resist a glance over her shoulder at it: One Canada Square, a.k.a. Canary Wharf Tower, a.k.a. Torchwood Tower. It was starting to buckle about a third of the way up, glass exploding everywhere. News images of the World Trade Center flashed in her mind. _“Run!”_ she screamed at anyone within earshot. “Don’t stop running!” She thought of the Doctor and Rose, at least fifteen minutes behind her, and her heart seized in terror.

They were two streets away when the building collapsed. Donna registered the sight of clouds of debris billowing outward before she heard and felt it, and she pulled Phil, whose hand she still held, into the alcove of a shop to shield them from the concussion wave. She closed her eyes tight and waited.

They stood there until the worst of the rumbling stopped. An eerie silence settled, punctuated by the wails of car alarms. She looked at Phil, who was covered with a film of grey dust save for a strip across his eyes, where he had been shielding them with his arm. Stepping out into the street, they looked back toward the building through the haze.

“It’s just … gone,” Phil muttered. “We could have been killed.” Donna couldn’t take her eyes off the rubble. Would he regenerate, under there? Only to wake up and find Rose dead? “Donna, you okay?”

She looked at him, this stranger, and suddenly wanted someone to lash out at. “My friends … stayed behind to stop things from getting any worse, to save this _stupid_ city, and now they’re probably trapped under there!” She jerked her hand out of his, wiping at her dirty face with her dirty sleeve.

“Donna!” A familiar voice came out of the gloom, and she gasped.

 _“Doctor?”_ She squinted, and the first thing she could see was the faint blue pinpoint light of the sonic screwdriver. “Over here! I’m over here!” The shouting made her double over coughing.

The Doctor and Rose emerged, covered in the same dust but otherwise seemingly unharmed. Donna flung herself at them, an arm around each of their necks. “Oh my God, I thought you were still in there!” She pulled back. “How the hell did you get out? We just barely made it out in time.” 

The Doctor grinned. “Zipped down the lift cable,” he said as if it were something he did every day. With a sniff, he added. “We’ve done it before, Rose and I.” He glanced over Donna’s shoulder and smiled, his teeth bright in contrast to his dirty face. “Hello, I’m the Doctor.”

Donna glanced back at Phil. “This is Phil, we came down the stairs together.”

Phil reached out and shook the Doctor’s hand. “Any friend of Donna’s … I’d likely be dead if it weren’t for her.”

“You’ve got a nasty scrape there,” the Doctor said, indicating Phil’s left shoulder. Donna watched Phil take in the sight of his own blood in confusion. 

“I didn’t even realize …” he said. Donna felt bad that she hadn’t noticed his injury either.

The Doctor examined it briefly. “It’s superficial, but you’ll need to get it looked at; there’s all sorts of nasty stuff in the air right now, so the potential for infection is high.”

The sound of screams and shouts filtered through to them. “We need to help,” Donna said, exhausted but determined.

“Indeed.” The Doctor looked over at the rubble, his brow furrowed. “If I could have figured it out sooner …”

“Stop,” Rose said, putting a hand on his arm as the three of them turned to go back. “Don’t do that, you did the best you could.”

“Donna, wait!” She looked around to see Phil awkwardly reaching into his back pocket. “Give me a ring later, let me know that you made it home safely, yeah?” He pulled out his wallet and handed her a card.

“Yeah, sure,” she muttered, thoughts already on the next task at hand. She crammed the card into her pocket. “Goodbye, Phil Wyeth.”


	3. Donna the Vampire Slayer

Donna awoke in the TARDIS infirmary, and the first thing she became aware of was a dull ache suffusing her chest. She opened her eyes, squinting at the light, and raised a hand to her face, realizing with a start that there were tubes in her nose.

“Donna?” It was Rose. Donna looked over to see Rose lever herself up from another cot and shuffle over, sitting gingerly on the chair beside her own bed. “How ya feeling?”

“What … hurts to talk,” she whispered.

“Tell me about it. We inhaled a lot of particulates and chemicals, so the Doctor had to fix us up. Required anaesthesia, that’s why you’re groggy.” She pointed to the oxygen Donna was breathing. “I was hitting the oxygen too until about a half hour ago.”

“Is _he_ okay?”

Rose waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, you know him, ‘superior physiology’ blah blah blah. He’s fine. Beating himself up for letting us stay out there too long. He’s not here, he’s gone over to UNIT headquarters to work on some idea he has for cleaning the air.”

Donna grimaced as the memories of their assistance with the recovery effort flooded back. “Not my favourite day, this.” She coughed, making her chest hurt all the more. At that moment, what she wanted more than anything else was to be in her own bed at home, away from this alien ship and the pain it sometimes brought her. For every experience that the Doctor had given her that was brilliant and amazing and magical, it seemed like there was one that brought her grief and gave her nightmares for weeks.

“I’m just grateful it was a bank holiday,” Rose said with a sigh, oblivious to Donna’s train of thought. “Can you imagine, otherwise?”

“I try not to.” Donna scooted up into a sitting position. “I need to call my family.”

“The Doctor spoke to your granddad and told him you were fine, so there’s no rush. You can rest.”

“How are _you_ feeling?” Donna asked.

Rose’s eyes closed briefly. “Guilty.”

“Why guilty?”

“Because there’s a tiny part of me that is perversely glad that building is gone. Seeing that room again …” Rose trailed off and shook her head, her eyes haunted by the past. Donna pulled her into a hug.

 

*** 

 

Entering her house, Donna was greeted with the sound of the telly. She rounded the corner and found her mum glued to the screen.

“Mm, Dad told me you’d been by. Isn’t it _awful_ ,” she said, gesturing at the news. Images of the fallen tower flashed by. “They’re saying it’s terrorists.”

“Yeah, they _would_ say that. It’s politically expedient.”

“Well, what do _you_ think it was, miss?” her mother asked, eyes still on the telly.

Donna ignored her. “Where’s Granddad?”

“You know, he was feeling stronger today so he went up the hill.”

Donna went out the back and sure enough, there he was, just as if no time had passed – telescope out, thermos at his side. She approached him. “What have you got in your sights tonight, Granddad?”

He sighed and sat back. “Nothing. Too much debris in the air.”

Donna sat next to him on the blanket. “The Doctor’s working on that, he’ll have it sorted in no time.”

“Was it aliens? That brought down the tower?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I thought so.” He opened his thermos and poured himself some tea. “Oh!” he said suddenly, sloshing a little tea onto the blanket. “Some bloke called looking for you. Hang on, I wrote it down…” He fished in one of his pockets and pulled out several slips of paper. “Here it … no, that’s the shopping. _Here_ it is.” He squinted at the note. “Said his name was Phil, and he wanted to take you to dinner in exchange for saving his life. He left his number.” Wilf held out the note. 

Donna suppressed a smile, then shook her head. “I’m not gonna call him.”

“Well, why the hell not? He sounded nice on the phone.”

“He is nice, I suppose. A bit daft.”

“All men are daft, Donna, don’t you know that yet? Even your Doctor.”

Donna snorted. “Please, I’m practically his marriage counsellor, you don’t have to tell _me_ he’s daft.”

“So why not call this Phil?” Wilf asked.

“Well, for starters, I live most of the time on a spaceship.”

Wilf frowned. “So that’s it? You’ve given up on ever meeting someone that you can fall in love with?”

“It’s not that I’ve given up, it’s … Half my old friends, it’s like their lives revolve around waiting for the right man to come along. I’m not going to fall into that trap. I have the most amazing life I can imagine, and I’m not going to give that up so that I can become one of those women.”

“I’m not saying you should leave the Doctor so that you can sit home and place singles ads on the internet. I’m saying you should go out on one date with a good-looking bloke and have a nice time.”

Donna eyed him side-long. “Who said he was good-looking?”

“Is he?”

“He’s all right.”

Her granddad held out the paper again. “So call him back.” After a long moment, Donna took the paper out of his hand.

 

*** 

 

“So I hope this is all right,” Phil said after they were seated at their restaurant table. “I haven’t eaten here before, but one of my mates recommended it.”

“Looks lovely,” Donna responded politely. She stole glances at Phil over the top of her menu, and realized she hadn’t really examined him while they were in the midst of fleeing a falling building. He was tall, maybe an inch or two taller than the Doctor, and he moved sort of awkwardly, like he had been a gawky teenager and never quite grew out of it. He had brown eyes and dark brown, wiry hair in which she could see a few stray grey hairs lurking. His clothes were nice enough – khaki trousers and an Oxford shirt – but he seemed to be one of those blokes who just didn’t look comfortable in his clothes, his sleeves just a tiny bit too short, his collar a little too big. Donna realized that the silence between them had probably dragged on too long, so she spoke up. “Is everyone from your office okay?”

“Yes, thankfully,” he said in his soft voice. “At least half had taken a mini-break for the holiday weekend and weren’t even in London. Everyone else managed to get out.”

“Where are you working now?” Donna asked.

“From home at the moment, while the powers that be look for temporary office space we can occupy. We lost everything, obviously, so it all has to be replaced: desks, computers, filing cabinets, everything. Fortunately, there was an offsite backup of our computer files, so most records are recoverable.” He paused and took a sip of his water, and Donna stifled a yawn. “I lost a lot of things, though. Books. I had an office full of books, and they’re all gone.”

Their waiter materialised, bringing their drinks and taking their orders for dinner. “So you’re a big reader, then?” Donna asked, picking up the thread of their conversation.

Phil smiled. “Well, in my office it was all textbooks and things related to my job, but yes, as a matter of fact, I am a fairly avid reader.”

“What sorts of books?” 

“Science fiction, mostly,” he replied, and Donna suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. She could see it now, she thought. If she turned back time thirty years, she could picture Phil as the nerdy kid in school who was the object of regular beatings and smelled a little bit like Marmite. Still, he wasn’t unattractive now; in fact, Donna thought, studying his features, he might be called handsome. He had a strong chin and nice lips and a very attractive smile. 

“Does science fiction still hold the same appeal though, since everything that’s happened in the last several years?” she asked, sipping her cocktail. “Spaceships over London and Cybermen and Adipose?”

“Adipose?”

“The little fat babies.”

“Ah.” Phil scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I mean, there are some people who argue that those occurrences, strange as they may have been, had some terrestrial origin. That we still haven’t been visited by beings from another world.”

“Those people would be what we call idiots.”

Phil held up a hand. “I’m not saying I agree with them. I just like to keep an open mind.”

“Don’t keep it too open, mate, your brains’ll fall out.”

He laughed. “Fair enough. So I didn’t quite catch what you do for a living. Some government agency, I take it?”

Donna swallowed, trying to decide whether to lie or give some version of the truth. Finally she just said, “Yeah, something like that.”

They made innocuous small talk through the meal, which was good but not outstanding. As they were finishing their coffee and Phil was signing the receipt from their bill, Donna let her eyes slide around the restaurant. When they settled on a bloke escorting a woman out, she started slightly. “Oh my _God_ ,” she murmured.

“What?” Phil asked, looking around and then back at Donna.

“I can’t believe he would show his face in London after what happened last time,” she muttered, angry and not thinking much about who she was talking to. “And picking up a meal in a public restaurant like this, the nerve.” She grabbed her handbag and stood up. “Come on.”

“What?” 

Donna didn’t look round at him, too focused on her pursuit. “Plasmavore.”

Phil jogged and caught up with her on the pavement. “I’m sorry, what?”

“That was a plasmavore, and he’s going to kill that woman unless I stop him.” She was punching a number on her mobile and keeping her distance from the couple in front of them. “Rose?” 

“Donna!” came the voice on the other end of the line. “How was your–” 

“Yeah, not now, you know that plasmavore we scared off about a month ago? He’s still in London, and if I don’t miss my mark, he’s about to eat his date.”

“We’ll lock onto your mobile,” Rose said, suddenly all business. “Be there in a mo’.”

Donna put her phone away. “Would you mind telling me what a plasmavore is?” Phil asked, and she realized she’d forgotten he was there. 

Well, there was probably no lying to him now. “It’s … it’s like a vampire. It’s an alien that drains the blood of its victims.”

Phil’s eyes boggled a bit. “And you’re, what … Buffy?”

“I’m _what_?” Donna asked, not having the faintest clue what he was talking about.

“Never mind.”

“Do you believe me?” she asked.

He snorted. “I … no, I don’t think I do.”

She smirked at him. “But you’re still here.”

“Open mind, remember?” At that point, ahead of them, the plasmavore turned into an alley, his arm still around the woman at his side. Donna trotted to catch up, rounding the corner to see him already with the woman pressed against a wall. If she hadn’t known better, she would have assumed they were intent on an inappropriately public shag.

“Oi! Plasmavore!” she shouted from a few feet away. “I know what you are, so let her go!”

The man turned and looked at Donna, and in the light of a single streetlight she could see that the woman he was holding against the wall was weeping, too terrified to even scream properly. “Get out of here, woman, or you’re next,” the plasmavore snarled. There was blood on his mouth, and Donna could hear a small, shocked intake of breath from Phil.

“Not a chance.” She took a step closer. “D’you remember me? I was with the Doctor when he told you to leave Earth and never come back. Turns out, you didn’t even manage to get out of London, nor did you bother to change your face,” she said, remembering that they were shape-changers. She felt insulted that he’d thought so little of the Doctor’s threat that he didn’t take the slightest precautions against getting caught again. 

He shrugged. “I like this face. And where’s your Time Lord now?” he sneered. “Looks to me like all you’ve got now is a bloke trying not to wet himself.”

The sound of the TARDIS engines filtered to her from around the corner. “I believe that would be him now,” she said with a dangerous smile. There was the sound of footsteps, and the Doctor and Rose charged into the alley.

“Thanks Donna, we’ll take it from here,” the Doctor said, his eyes trained on the plasmavore and gesturing for his victim to come towards them. “You get this woman and your …” – a glance at Phil – “date to safety.” The Doctor stared down the plasmavore, the look on his face murderous. “I said you’d get one warning,” the Doctor snarled at the man backing away from him toward the dead end of the alley. Donna put an arm around the woman and led her and Phil away. She offered to take the woman to a hospital, but she refused, seeming almost as frightened of Donna as she had been of her attacker. Left alone, she and Phil crossed the street and Donna stopped and leaned against a shop window. Her heart was hammering; she’d talked a big show, but if the Doctor hadn’t shown up, she’d had no way to defend herself against a blood-sucking alien.

“What’s he going to do to that guy?” Phil asked.

Donna shrugged. “I don’t know. The Doctor can be a very merciful man … until he isn’t.”

Phil leaned against the window next to her. “Is your life always like this?”

Donna closed her eyes and sighed a defeated sigh. “Yeah.”


	4. Deeper Meaning in Coffee

Donna and Rose sat down at a table with their glasses of wine. They were in a 48th century space station which boasted _BEST VIEWS IN THE GALAXY!_ on their adverts, and Donna had to admit that the nebula they could see through the enormous windows was pretty spectacular.

“So in all the excitement, I haven’t had a chance to ask you about your date last night,” Rose said.

“Yeah, I was hoping you’d just forget about asking me altogether.”

“That bad?”

Donna shrugged. “It’s not that it was bad, it was just … I don’t know. He’s not really my type, for one thing. He’s kind of a geek.”

“Hey, now,” Rose said with one side of her mouth turned up. “Nothing wrong with a geek. Besides, he looked reasonably attractive to me.”

“He’s a bit of all right, I suppose. I mean, he’s not a scrawny alien with a god complex, but we can’t all be as lucky as you, Rose.” Rose took the jibe in good humour, cackling at Donna’s description of the Doctor. “And he was a nice bloke. Didn’t abuse the waiter or kick any puppies in the street. Nonsmoker, good job, no ex-wives lurking in the shadows. I suppose he ticks all the boxes.”

“So what was the problem?” Rose asked over the lip of her glass.

Donna sighed heavily. “You know how there’s people who can handle the things we deal with? Aliens and plots to end the world and … and standing up for what’s right even when it might get you killed, and then there’s people who can’t?”

Rose was nodding. “Of course.”

“I think he’s probably one of the people who can’t.”

“Oh.” Rose looked out at the swirling nebula for a while. “Well, I suppose you’ll know if he isn’t.”

Donna gulped her wine, the idea of getting well and truly pissed looking better and better. “And how’s that?”

“Because after seeing you go nose to nose with a plasmavore in an alley, he probably won’t call you again.”

“Yeah,” she answered with a sigh. “I mean, it’s moot anyway, it’s not like I’m leaving the TARDIS to chase after a man anyway, right?” Donna laughed, and ignored the pained look in Rose’s eye as she took another drink of her wine.

She agreed with Rose, he wasn’t going to call her again, which was why she stopped dead in her tracks in the TARDIS hallway when her mobile rang two days later and the caller ID showed Phil’s number. Leaning against the wall, she took a deep breath and answered.

“Hello?”

“Donna?” His voice was deep and clear, but Donna was used to the fact that even in the Time Vortex, her signal was excellent. “Hey, it’s Phil.”

“Hello, Phil,” she said, and then winced at her glib tone.

“Listen, I was … that is, I was interes–, um … would you like to get coffee with me sometime this week?”

Coffee. Donna wasn’t sure what that signified. On the one hand, he’d called, which she honestly hadn’t thought he would. On the other, coffee seemed like a step backward down the dating path from dinner. Of course, Phil didn’t seem the sort to be that well versed in all those dating signals anyway. Maybe he just had a hankering for hot, caffeinated beverages.

“Donna? You still there?”

“Oh yeah, sorry, was distracted by the telly for a moment. Sure, coffee’s good. When?”

“Thursday afternoon? Say, around four?”

She’d lost track of their Earth-based timeline, as she frequently did. “And Thursday’s date would be?”

“The fifteenth.”

“The fifteenth, lovely! That’s … April, right?”

Phil laughed. “Yes, April. 2010. A.D.”

“You know, you’d be surprised how often that sort of clarification is useful.”

As soon as she hung up, Donna began to wonder if she shouldn’t have just refused him. Why go on another date with him, if it wasn’t going to go anywhere? What was the point? The point, her brain told her, was that it felt good to be admired by a man, that was the point.

The Doctor whined and complained about returning to Earth so soon. Donna supposed it was her own fault; she should have just said she wanted to visit her granddad and not admitted that it was for a second date with “that bloke,” as the Doctor called him. He was rattling the controls around in what appeared to be an almost aimless fashion, until Rose threatened that if he landed Donna too late it would be a very long time indeed before he got to have sex with her again. At that point, flying the TARDIS became a serious pursuit worthy of all his concentration.

The coffee shop was crowded, and Donna felt awkward and wrong-footed as she made her way over to the small table where Phil was sitting, waiting for her. A smile broke out over his entire face when their eyes met, and Donna couldn’t help giving him a small smile in return.

He stood when she approached the table. “I got you a coffee,” he said, pointing, “but if you want something else …”

“No, coffee’s fine.” She sat down. “How’ve you been?”

“Good.” There was a long pause. “I wanted to—”

“How’s your—” Donna said simultaneously. They both stopped. “You first.”

Phil flushed. “I just … I wanted to say, I really enjoyed having dinner with you. Even though the end of the evening was a bit strange, but I’ve … I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

Donna didn’t know what to say to that. Most men played at being aloof in the early stages of dating, and she had no idea what to do with one who let himself appear so vulnerable. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again,” she responded.

“Why not?”

“Because of the end of the evening.”

“Well, it wasn’t _you_ biting someone … that _was_ what was happening, wasn’t it?” He scratched his head in a way that reminded her of the Doctor.

“Yeah. I mean, they don’t all do that. Some of them drink blood with straws … apparently.” _What the hell am I going on about?_

“And it was an alien,” he said flatly.

“Yeah.”

“And that bloke, Doctor … what was it?”

“Look, Phil, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think you want to hear any more about what you saw, or about the Doctor, or any of it.”

He looked bewildered at that. “But … I like you. So I want to know more about you, that’s all.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Then tell me.”

Later, if asked, Donna wouldn’t have been able to explain what she did next. She honestly wasn’t sure if she was testing him, hoping he could deal with it, or if she was hoping to put an end to all of it and drive him away. She stood up from the table. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

Donna walked out of the coffee shop, turned a corner, and marched down the street to where the TARDIS was parked. She could sense Phil following her, and when she reached the doors of the blue box, she turned around and looked him in the eye. “This is where I live.”

He looked around dubiously. “On this street?”

Pulling out her key, she stuck it in the lock of the TARDIS door. “No, here.”

“In an old police box?”

“Yep.” She turned the key and pushed open the door. “Wanna see?” Without waiting for him to answer, Donna walked into the TARDIS. 

After a couple of seconds, Phil did follow. His eyes rolled around, taking in the expanse of the console room, and he took an unsteady step back. He looked a little bit green, as if the dimensional improbability of the TARDIS was making him nauseated.

“This is a spaceship. Well, space- and timeship, actually. As you can see, it’s bigger on the inside. I live on it with a 900-year-old alien and his human girlfriend. A few days ago I was on a space station in the 48th century, and yesterday I was in feudal Japan. This is my life. So go back to your books and your telly and your job and forget about me.”

He gaped at her. After a few attempts at speaking where his mouth opened and closed without any noise coming out, he finally managed, “Are _you_ an alien?”

“Nope. Human.”

“Okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “This is … well, it isn’t what I was expecting.” She snorted, arms crossed over her chest. “Look, you obviously want to scare me away, and I don’t know, maybe you have. But I suppose it really doesn’t matter, because if that’s your goal, then I should go. Okay. I’m gonna …” He gestured at the door behind him, taking another step backward.

“It was nice knowing you,” Donna said softly as he walked out the door.

 

*** 

 

Rose dropped her jeans to the floor of the bedroom and kicked them away. “I wish Donna hadn’t sabotaged it like that.”

The Doctor shrugged from where he was stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. He looked up from his book and regarded her over the top of his glasses. “She just didn’t want to waste any more time on him, that's all. I think it was wise.”

“You would,” Rose said as she pulled off her shirt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rose didn’t answer his question, digging around in a drawer for some pyjamas and pretending she didn’t hear him. “I just think that he might’ve been able to handle the whole travelling-with-an-alien thing if she hadn’t flung the TARDIS in his face five minutes into their second date.”

“Well, obviously Donna didn’t think he could.”

Rose finished dressing for bed and crawled under the covers next to where the Doctor was lying on top of them. “Donna is afraid of falling in love with someone because it might mean she’d have to leave the TARDIS. She doesn’t want that.”

“Quite right, too,” the Doctor said, rolling to face her.

“Is it? Really? You think she’s better off rattling around space and time with us for the rest of her life than she would be finding someone who could be a true partner to her?”

“Not everyone wants a romantic partner. Not everyone needs one. You’re imposing your own priorities on her.”

Rose sighed. “Maybe. Although I’d bet that you once classified yourself among the ranks of those who didn’t need a romantic partner.”

“Well, that’s neither here nor there,” the Doctor equivocated.

“Look, you might be right. Donna might always prioritise travelling through space and time ahead of romance. But I’ve seen her watching couples on the street. For that matter, I’ve seen her watching _us_ when she thinks she’s unobserved. She’s not immune to the desire for someone to love her.”

The Doctor made a noncommittal sound and turned back to his book. Rose watched him read for a while before she said, “I know you don’t want to lose her, but she should do what’s best for her.”

He frowned at her. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I happen to think she _is_ doing what’s best for her.”

“Yeah, okay. Fine.” Rose rolled over and turned her lamp off, settling down under the duvet.

There was a sigh behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to … I should always bow to your superior knowledge when it comes to love, shouldn’t I?”

Rose smiled into her pillow. “Yes, you should.”

She heard the soft sound of him setting his book and specs on the table and felt him shift closer to her. “You were definitely right about the fact that I need a romantic partner. At least, if that partner is you.” His voice was deep and throaty, and his lips pressed against the skin behind her ear. “In fact, I find myself in need of a romantic partner right now.” Another, longer kiss to her ear. “And by romantic, I mean specifically a sexual partner, in case that’s not clear.”

Rose giggled and craned around to look at him. “I am a bit knackered, but I suppose I’m up for it if we make it quick.”

“Oh Rose, I love it when you talk dirty like that.”

“Shut it and get your kit off, Time Lord.”


	5. In Vain I Have Struggled

It had been several weeks since they’d been to Earth. Donna had spoken to her grandfather often on the phone, and he seemed to be doing quite well. 

“So I told your mum that it was none of her business what web sites I go to anyway,” Wilf was saying during their latest call. Donna sat in the TARDIS kitchen, stirring her tea and listening to him talk.

“You should just clear your browsing history, Granddad, then she won’t know where you’ve been.”

“If I do that, she’ll just assume I’m looking at pornography all day, which I am not,” he proclaimed archly.

“Even if you were, you’ve earned the right to look at pornography all day and not have your daughter giving you grief about it,” Donna said.

He laughed, then said, “Don’t let your mother hear you talking like that.” It was a phrase she’d heard him utter many times over the course of her life. “Oh, I almost forgot!” he said suddenly. “You got a letter.”

“Just put it with the rest of my mail,” Donna said.

“No, but I mean, it’s a real letter from a person. Not a bill, or an advert, or a pile of coupons. A _letter_ , Donna; that’s a strange thing to see in this day and age.”

“Who’s it from?”

“Return address says ‘Wyeth’.”

“You are _kidding_ me. That’s Phil, the bloke I went on a date with.” Donna weighed her options. “Open it up and read it to me.”

“I can’t do that, Donna, it might be personal,” Wilf said in a hushed tone.

“Granddad, I promise you, nothing happened with Phil that is too personal for you to read to me over the phone.”

“All right, girl, if you’re sure.” She heard the tearing of paper. “Let’s see here. Oh, I need my specs – now where did those get to?” After a long wait for him to find his glasses, he finally started to read.

“ ‘Dear Donna. I’ve torn up about twelve copies of this letter, trying to decide the right way to phrase everything. I finally decided there was no right way to phrase it, and I should just get it out there and post it before I lose my nerve. Calling you was out of the question. I’m quite bad on the phone, and I’m sure you’d find the sound of all my uhs and ums intolerable to listen to. Anyway, here’s the thing: I can’t stop thinking about you. I mean, it’s been six weeks, and we only went on one proper date, and then one very brief date where you tried to scare me away with your spaceship. But I can’t get you out of my mind.

“ ‘Clearly, you lead a life that I can hardly imagine. And probably, the thought of dating an ordinary patent attorney on Earth is beyond dull to you. But just in case it isn’t, I wanted you to know that you didn’t scare me away. And that I can’t stop thinking about you. Phil.’ That’s it, Donna, that’s all he wrote.”

Donna tried to think of what to say. After a pause, her granddad added, “That’s quite a letter, Donna. If you don’t at least call the gentleman, I might just have to give you the back of my hand.”

She laughed a watery laugh, realising with no small amount of surprise that she was near tears. “I’ll call him, Granddad.”

“Good girl.”

 

*** 

 

Donna held her mobile tightly in her hand. Her palm was sweating, and she switched ears so that she could wipe her hand on her trousers.

“Hello?”

“Did it occur to you that the reason you can’t stop thinking about me is because I’m the strangest person you’ve ever met and not because of any romantic feelings you have toward me?”

“Donna. I take it you got my letter.” 

“Yeah.”

“What makes you think those two things are mutually exclusive?” Phil asked.

“What two things?”

“You being the strangest person I’ve ever met and having romantic feelings for you.”

Donna laughed. “I suppose they don’t have to be, but it might be something you want to discuss with your therapist.”

“I … I want to see you again. I don’t care if you’re carrying a solar system inside your handbag, you can’t scare me. Let me take you out again.”

Her face split into a wide grin; how could she say no to that? “All right.”

“When?”

“Whenever you want. I’m on a time machine, so you tell me the day and we’ll try to hit it.”

“Wait, if you’re on a time machine, how does my phone know when in your timeline to call your phone?” he asked.

“Blimey, you are a sci-fi geek, aren’t you? I could try to explain it, but it would involve me using phrases like ‘timey-wimey’ and no one wants that.”

“Okay, I’ll set that question aside for later. How about Friday, June 4th, 2010, at half one in the afternoon.”

Donna raised an eyebrow. “Why so early?”

“Well, I’ve got the afternoon off and I was contemplating a picnic. What do you think?”

What she thought was that she hated eating out-of-doors. What she said was, “A picnic sounds lovely.”

 

*** 

 

Donna assumed that their date was only a few days hence for Phil, but she waited a long time before bringing it up to the Doctor. She kept trying, the words dying on her lips before she could say anything. Stranger still, she was reluctant to mention it to Rose. Donna was in the shower turning the problem over in her mind when it hit her that the reason she might be reluctant to talk to her closest female friend is that she was embarrassed. She didn’t want to admit to the woman who was loved by a Time Lord that she might be developing feelings for an ordinary human. 

Finally, she couldn’t take it any more, berating herself for being such a ninny. Marching into the console room where the Doctor was working, Donna put her hands on her hips. “I need to go to Earth.”

He glanced at her from where he was soldering two unrecognizable pieces of metal together. “Is Wilf all right?”

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “He’s fine. I’m seeing Phil.”

“What?” The Doctor squinted at her. “I thought you were done with him.”

Donna met his eyes, standing a little straighter. “Turns out he’s rather persistent.”

“Well … well … are you sure? I mean, no offense, but he didn’t seem … you know.”

“No, I _don’t_ know.”

“Don’t know what?” Rose asked around a bite of apple as she came in and flopped onto the jump seat.

“He didn’t seem right for you. Didn’t seem like your type,” the Doctor said.

“Who, Phil?” Rose looked at Donna. “Are you seeing Phil again?”

“What makes you think he’s not my type?” Donna asked the Doctor angrily. “Are you saying I can’t pull someone who works in a posh office building?”

“No,” he answered patiently, “quite the contrary. I think he’s not good enough for you.”

“Oh. Well, that may be,” Donna conceded. “But let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind.”

 

*** 

 

Donna stepped out of the TARDIS into a persistent, drizzling rain. She’d phoned Phil, and he met her outside the blue box with the look of a man who’d just seem something materialize out of thin air. Which of course, he had.

“Sorry about the weather,” he said, still glancing at the TARDIS warily and extending his arm with the umbrella so that it shielded Donna.

“Not your fault,” Donna said. “You didn’t make it rain, did you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said with a grin, walking her away toward his flat. He looked back over his shoulder. “How does it … teleport like that?”

“I hope you aren’t expecting me to be able to explain how the TARDIS works, because you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I haven’t the foggiest idea how it does most of the things it does.”

“Fair point.”

“So I take it the picnic is out,” she said.

“Well, yes and no.” At Donna’s raised eyebrow, he clarified. “I set up the picnic in my flat, if that’s all right.”

“Sounds brilliant.” _And romantic,_ she added mentally as she followed him through the door of the building. Donna realized that she was feeling the kind of nervous excitement that came with being with a man she fancied. She glanced at Phil sidelong in the lift. Was it true, _did_ she fancy him? At the feeling of her heart pounding in her chest, Donna realized that she did. _Well, isn’t that wizard_.

He opened the door to his flat and gestured for her to go in. “I can give you the grand tour; trust me, it won’t take long.” He led her through the sitting room, of which she only got the vaguest impression of tall shelves lined with books and DVDs, and into the kitchen, which surprised her. It was a good size and not at all what one might expect from a bachelor; a stand mixer stood at one end of a row of cookbooks, a large knife block at the other. It was tidy but not spotless, with evidence of recent food preparation. “You cook, I take it?” Donna asked.

“Some. It’s one of the few hobbies of mine that stuck.” He walked over and nervously cleared some dishes off the counter and into the sink. “Let me show you the rest of the place.”

Back through the sitting room and down a hallway, and Donna took the opportunity to ogle his bum as she walked behind him. Not the best she’d ever seen, but it was quite nice.

“This is my bedroom,” he said, standing at the door as if leading her in would be too much, too soon. She only got a brief glimpse of a wardrobe and one corner of the bed. “Bathroom’s here in case you need to use the loo, and that’s the second bedroom that I use as a study. Don’t look in there if you value your sanity,” Phil added, which led Donna to immediately peek in. There was indeed quite a clutter; stacks of books and CD cases and papers covered most of the surface of the desk, and more stacks littered the floor against one wall. 

“It’s disorganized, but it isn’t dirty. I think my sanity is intact,” Donna joked.

“Oh good. Well, I have someone in to clean every two weeks, and she manages to shift the junk around, bless her. Anyway, that’s the whole place. Are you hungry?” He was nervous, which was making Donna a bit jumpy, but she was also starting to find it a tiny bit adorable.

“Yeah, food sounds good.”

“Excellent.” Phil clapped his hands together and led her back into the sitting room. Rounding a large leather sofa, Donna could now see that he hadn’t been joking when he said he’d moved the picnic. A blanket was stretched out on the floor, and on it was a wine bucket, glasses, and two full place settings. A basket of bread sat next to the wine. “I’m just going to go get the food.”

Donna looked at the floor where she supposed she should sit. She wasn’t really built for sitting on the floor for long periods of time, but all the running and climbing she had to do with the Doctor had her a lot more limber than most women her age, so she reckoned she could manage it. 

Now that she could look around, she found that Phil’s flat was nicer than she expected. His shelves were somewhat cluttered, but something about all those books gave the room a warmth and cosiness. His décor was spare but at least some thought had gone into it; there were a few houseplants and some framed art prints on the walls. Donna sat down on the blanket with her back against the sofa, suddenly overwhelmed with how glad she was that she’d decided to come.

“Here we are,” Phil said, coming back in. He set out several plates and Donna marvelled at the spread. 

“You really _are_ a cook, aren’t you?”

He flushed with pride and began to tell her what everything was. There were fancy finger sandwiches and a couple of salads, and everything Donna tasted was delicious. She realised that once again, she had to reassess Phil. She had classified him as a sci-fi geek, but he didn’t really fit the stereotype. For one thing, Donna thought, admiring his figure as he sat across from her on the floor, he filled out a pair of jeans quite nicely.

They talked about the adjustments his firm was making to their new office location, and then they talked about politics. Donna had never been particularly good at staying up on current events, but at least now, being a time traveller gave her a good excuse. Phil caught her up on what the government had been doing in the wake of the tower collapsing, and little of it was good.

“Let’s just say for sake of argument that Canary Wharf Tower _was_ brought down by terrorists,” Donna commented. “Aren’t we just showing them that they succeeded at terrifying us?”

Phil nodded. “It’s been heading this way for years, ever since the World Trade Center was destroyed, and then of course the 7/7 bombings. The tower falling just sped up an already runaway train. More surveillance, more needless security that doesn’t actually make us safer.”

“It certainly doesn’t make me regret my decision to live on a spaceship,” Donna said.

There was a pause as they both ate and drank in silence. “So how did you end up …” Phil gestured vaguely.

“Travelling through time and space with an alien?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a long story,” Donna said. “The short version is, he saved me from my traitorous fiancé, who was cheating on me with a giant spider. I ended up travelling with him, although not right away. He asked me, I said no, but soon I realized that was a mistake and after a long time I tracked him down.”

He took that in silently for a minute. “Giant spider?”

“Remember that star over London on Christmas a few years back, and the Thames getting drained?”

“That was _you_?” Phil asked.

“That star was the spider’s ship; draining the Thames was the Doctor.”

“And how does Rose figure into it? Did he save her from a giant spider too?”

“Nah, with her, it was men made of plastic and a life of working in a shop.” Donna drank some wine. “She was on the TARDIS long before I came along. When I met the Doctor, he’d just lost her, which is another long story. But they’re together now, and madly, disgustingly in love.”

Their conversation moved on to films and music, but eventually shifted back to Donna’s experiences on board the TARDIS. She explained the true story behind the ATMOS devices, and Phil hung on every word, his mouth open and his plate of food forgotten. 

“And all because you noticed something off in the personnel records,” he marvelled when she was finished.

“Well, not _all_ because –”

“And then you went on board an alien spaceship and activated the teleport without getting caught. Absolutely _brilliant_.”

Donna blushed, “I’m really not, you know.”

“No, but you are!” Phil shifted closer. “Do you think a … Time Lord or whatever would keep you by his side if you weren’t? Donna, you’re astonishing.” His voice dropped to a whisper.

She watched his lips, wondering if she should wait for him to make a move. Nah, that wasn’t her. Donna leaned in and planted a kiss on his lips. He returned the pressure, his nose pressing pleasantly against her cheek. Donna opened her mouth slightly, not enough to get tongues involved, but enough to pull his bottom lip between hers. Phil’s large hands came up and cradled her face, and Donna’s heart hammered in her chest. When they parted several seconds later, Donna was relieved to be where she was; collapsing to the floor was improbable, seeing as she was already there.

“Wow,” Phil breathed.

“Yeah.” Their lips met again with more urgency, mouths open and tongues touching and Donna heard Phil groan low in his throat. Honestly, the idea that things might turn physical hadn’t occurred to her, and now she was wondering where it should stop, or if she wanted it to. They continued to kiss for a few minutes, hands roaming in the relatively safe territories of hair and shoulders. Finally, Donna parted from him and sat back, trying to decide how to phrase the fact that she was aching for him physically but wasn’t ready to fall into bed.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said before she could say anything. “I’m rushing things. I just … I feel so …” he fumbled.

“Me too,” Donna said quickly. “And thank you. For not rushing.” She smiled. When he smiled back at her, her heart skipped a beat.


	6. Rushing

“And so my older sister, who had been teasing me for years, decided to really scare me. So she laid on the ground very still, and when I came over, her friend told me she was dead. I guess they expected me to scream or cry. But all I did was look at her, and then look at the friend, and say, ‘Good.’”

Donna cackled, throwing her head back. “And you were _five_?”

“I was five.” Their attraction out on the table, things had relaxed considerably between Donna and Phil. Even though sex was still an open question, the fact that it wasn’t an open question for that afternoon made them more comfortable with each other. They spent hours talking, until it was time to eat again. Phil took her to a nearby pub and they had a relaxed meal over pints of Smithwick’s and fish and chips. Afterwards, he walked her to the TARDIS as if he were escorting her home to a normal house. 

“Do you want to come in?” Donna asked, enjoying the normalcy of it, even if they were standing at the door of a timeship. 

He looked nervously at the door, perhaps thinking of the impossibility of what lay on the other side. “I don’t want to intrude …”

“You won’t be. Come on,” Donna said, grabbing his hand as she let herself in with the other. 

The console room was empty, and the time rotor was alight and unmoving. She watched Phil take it all in, and his fear seemed to shift to wonder the more he looked around. “It’s nothing like I imagined,” he finally said. “I used to try to picture what something alien, something truly extraterrestrial, would look like.” He gazed up at the high ceiling, then walked closer to the console. “It’s both more bizarre and more mundane” – he gestured at the quite ordinary tool belt that hung from the console – “than I could possibly have dreamed up.”

“That pretty much sums up the Doctor too. Hundreds of years old, can feel the turn of the Earth and the shifting of timelines, brain that moves faster than light. But he’s also a bloke. Likes chips and Harry Potter and goes all nonverbal when Rose wears a tight top.”

“I guess it’s business as usual for you, all this,” Phil said. 

Before Donna could answer, the Doctor came in from the hallway, drawing up short when he saw Donna had a visitor. He flicked his eyes over Phil, then continued on toward the console and began studying something on the monitor intently. “What have I told you about bringing boys home, young lady?” he said without looking at either of them. It was a joke, but he sounded more annoyed than amused.

“Doctor, I don’t think I’ve ever properly introduced you. This is Phil Wyeth.” Phil walked over and held out his hand, which the Doctor eyed suspiciously before shaking it briefly.

“Nice to meet you, Donna told me a lot about you,” Phil said. The Doctor just grunted, walking around to the other side of the console.

“We can’t stay here all day,” the Doctor said, addressing Donna. “Are you ready to go?”

Donna frowned at him. “In a minute,” she bit out. She walked Phil over to the door. “Sorry, he’s clearly in a mood.”

Phil glanced over at the Doctor, who was back to ignoring them. “No problem. I’d like to see you again. Soon, if at all possible.”

“How’s tomorrow night?” Donna blurted out, then flushed with embarrassment.

Phil’s face broke out in a wide grin. “Brilliant. Should I pick you up here? Say, seven?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll call you.”

“Okay. Bye, Donna.” He gave her a chaste kiss on the lips, then slipped out of the TARDIS.

Donna immediately rounded on the Doctor. “What the hell is _your_ problem?”

He looked at her, wide-eyed. “I don’t have a problem.”

“Then why are you being so rude?”

“Just didn’t expect to find your idiot boyfriend in my TARDIS,” he said under his breath, but loud enough for Donna to hear. 

“Let me tell you something, spaceman.” Donna walked over to him and stuck a finger in his face. “One, this is my home, and I’ll bring Phil here if I like. Two, he’s not an idiot, and I’ll thank you not to talk about him in that way in my presence.”

“I thought you didn’t even _like_ him!” the Doctor protested.

“My feelings for him aren’t relevant. You need to show some common decency.” She started to walk out to go to her room. “Also, I’m seeing him tomorrow night.”

“Oh, no. I’m not staying around here another day just so you can date.”

“Oh, have I _inconvenienced_ you with my love life? It’s a good thing I didn’t expend so much energy getting Rose back for you a few years ago, and it’s _really_ fortunate that I haven’t been playing marriage counsellor to you all this time, otherwise I might think you had a double standard.” She was blazing with righteous anger. “You know what? I’ll stay at my mum’s tonight. You can take the TARDIS and go where you like.” Without waiting for a response, Donna stormed out into the night.

 

*** 

 

Donna awoke in the morning to the combined trill and vibration of her mobile, jittering away on the bedside table. With a groan, she picked it up and fumbled to answer.

“Hello?”

“It’s Rose. I woke you, didn’t I? I’m sorry, I thought I waited long enough to call.”

With a glance at the clock, Donna sighed. “No, it’s fine. I should be up already, it’s just that I had a hard time sleeping last night.”

“The Doctor and I had a talk.” The way she said ‘talk’ made Donna feel a flash of sympathy for the Doctor, even though Rose had almost certainly been acting on her behalf and really, he deserved whatever he’d gotten.

“Oh?”

“I know you have a date tonight, but we’ll be back to pick you up whenever you want after that. Tomorrow morning, next week, doesn’t matter. You take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks, Rose. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know.” 

“You like him, don’t you?” Donna could hear Rose’s smile.

“I think I really do.”

“Good luck tonight. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Donna laughed. “Rose, I dread to think what that could possibly be.”

 

*** 

 

Phil took her to an Italian restaurant, and the meal seemed to pass quickly. Donna hardly knew what she ate, she was so wrapped up in their conversation and in watching his face as he talked. Being infatuated was a funny thing, she thought; in the space of two days she had gone from finding all his little quirks cute to thinking that they made him one of the handsomest men she’d ever laid eyes on. She loved his crooked smile, and how tall he was, and she loved the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck. 

As they got into his car after dinner, Donna said, “I’d invite you to mine, except the TARDIS isn’t on Earth at the moment, and the alternative is my mum’s house.”

“Well … at the risk of sounding like a lothario, do you want to come back to mine?”

Donna’s breath caught. “Yes.”

“Good.” He put the car in gear. “That’s good.”

Donna watched his profile as he drove. “You can be a lothario, you know. I don’t mind.”

“I … oh.” He flushed. “Okay.”

“That was too forward, wasn’t it?” Donna asked. “Sometimes I’m too forward.”

“No! Definitely not. Forward is good.”

The short drive back to his flat seemed to last for an eternity. Phil took her hand after they got out of the car, and Donna followed him into his building, a thrill of anticipation sparking up her spine.

“Do you want coffee?” Phil asked. 

“Sure.” She didn’t, particularly, but it gave them something to do while they contemplated the progression of the evening. The thing at the forefront of Donna’s mind was how long it had been since the last time she’d had sex. She had the moves, she just hoped they would all come back to her when the time came.

Following Phil into the kitchen, she watched as he pulled out a French press and scooped beans into the grinder. This was ridiculous, she thought. He’d said forward was good – time to test that. Donna marched over and took his hand, pulling him away from the coffee grinder. Before she could lose her nerve, she leaned up and kissed him soundly.

His mouth opened to hers readily, and the kiss quickly became wet and breathless. Phil’s hands settled at Donna’s waist, gripping her firmly and pulling her close.

“Remember what I said about not rushing?” she said against his lips after several long moments.

“Yeah,” he gasped.

“I think I want to rush now.”

“Quite right,” Phil said.

They stumbled their way into his bedroom, stopping several times along the way to kiss or fumble with buttons and clasps or to kick off shoes. Donna was self-conscious about her body; she knew she curved in all the right places, but she wasn’t shaped like a supermodel. Forcing those feelings down, she let Phil undress her, and he certainly seemed to like what he saw.

His sheets were crisp and smelled of washing powder, and she spared a moment to appreciate the fact that he had been optimistic enough about the evening’s outcome to put clean sheets on his bed. Phil lowered himself over her, warm and smooth skin against hers.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” Donna said, gasping at the press of his erection against her leg and arching into him. 

“Me too.” He brought a hand up and stroked it over her face, his eyes flicking around and taking in every one of her features. “We’ll just have to muddle through, I suppose,” he said with a somewhat lecherous smile. 

 

*** 

 

“I think …” Phil murmured into her hair, “that if I weren’t hungry, I could stay here for the rest of the day. And possibly tomorrow.”

“Hmm,” Donna agreed without opening her eyes. It was late Sunday morning, and they were lazing about in bed, neither of them anxious to get up and return to the real world. Much of the previous night that hadn’t been spent engaging in physical activities had been spent talking, telling all those stories from their pasts that summed up the people they had become. Donna wasn’t sure how much sleep she had gotten, but it didn’t seem like much. Nonetheless, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this good.

She was lying on her side, her head tucked under Phil’s chin, legs tangled together with his and her arm slung over his torso. “I think in addition to food, I’d also be in favour of a shower,” Donna said.

Phil lifted his head and kissed her shoulder. “Another good idea, and yet it requires me to let go of you. So I think on balance, I’m opposed.”

Donna laughed and kissed him briefly, avoiding a longer snog which might result in morning breath exposure. “Come on, shift. We’ve got to get up at some point.” She sat up, finger-combing her tangled hair and regretting the lack of an overnight bag. 

Phil just lay back and watched her. “You’re beautiful.”

“Stop it, don’t be daft.”

“You _are_.” He sat up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “For example, have I told you how positively magnificent your breasts are?”

“I think you might have mentioned it a few times last night, yeah.” His hands caressed her, and Donna’s eyes fluttered shut. “Last night was …”

“Please tell me you’re trying to come up with a positive adjective. My ego can’t take anything else,” Phil said.

“Oh yes.” She let her head fall back against his shoulder. “Definitely positive. Very positive.”

“That’s a relief. Because for me, it was fantastic.” After a long moment of comfortable silence, Phil released her. “Okay, showers and breakfast, yeah?”

“Yep. If I could borrow a towel and, you know, everything else.”

“Of course.” Donna felt his lips press gently against her temple. “Do we have to go anywhere today?” he murmured, his voice husky.

Donna shivered. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”

Later, freshly showered but dressed in the previous day’s clothes, Donna watched Phil cook breakfast, and she was overwhelmed with the joy that stole over her. Three years on a spaceship, and she felt as if she had almost forgotten the simple pleasures of a warm kitchen, a cup of coffee in hand and a day ahead of doing nothing in particular. Which itself was odd, because there were days like that on the TARDIS sometimes; there was breakfast and coffee and days spent relaxing. And yet there was an air of restless anticipation that filled the TARDIS, perhaps telegraphed through the ship from its owner, perhaps due to the pulse of the ship itself, that made even quiet times seem to vibrate with potential energy.

Donna shook herself from those thoughts. She loved the TARDIS, and she loved travelling. Just because she was feeling the bliss of being properly shagged didn’t mean she wanted to come back to Earth to stay. The fact that being with Phil was making her even think this way … she wondered if she should run and not look back. But then he turned toward her, all smiles and a ready quip on his tongue, and she dismissed that as an overreaction as well. One more night, she thought. I’ll spend one more night with him, and then I’ll go back to my old life.


	7. My Life Versus Yours

“Donna?”

She looked up from where she was sitting in the TARDIS garden to see Rose approaching. Giving Rose a tiny wave, Donna looked back at the pond. After a moment, Rose sank down next to her on the grass.

“The Doctor just asked me if he should try out another new colour of suit,” Rose said.

Donna smirked. “Did he have a colour in mind?”

“He had about sixteen colours in mind, many of which I didn’t even recognize the names of. I’ll try to keep him out of anything too hideous. Anyway, how are you?”

“Fine.”

“Sure you are,” Rose said with a huge dollop of sarcasm. “You’ve been moping about the TARDIS for weeks, but you’re fine.”

“I am _not_ moping.” She took in Rose’s sceptical expression. “I’m _not!_ I’m _thinking_.”

“What about?” Rose asked as she leaned back on her hands and looked up at the false sky. Donna didn’t answer right away. “Can I guess that it’s about the gentleman you’ve been chatting up on the phone every day?”

Finally Donna broke, covering her face with her hands and groaning. “What am I gonna do?”

“What?”

“I’m falling in love with him.”

“I gathered that much. To which I say, hooray! Why is it making you miserable?”

Donna glared at Rose. “Why do you think? Because I live _here_ , anywhere, anywhen, and he lives in a flat in London in 2010.”

Rose put a sympathetic hand on Donna’s arm. “Let’s go tell the Doctor to take us home for a bit. It’s been too long, you need to see him.”

“Oh, the Doctor’s going to be _thrilled_ with that, I can hardly wait.”

“The Doctor can take it up with me,” Rose said stubbornly, and Donna spared a moment to smile at the 25-year-old blonde capable of striking fear in the hearts of the last Time Lord in the universe. “Seriously, Donna. You miss him, and it’s making you crazy. Go see him.”

“I’m not sure if spending more time with him, especially time which is certain to involve sex, will make any of this easier.”

“What do you mean?”

Donna sighed. She might be in a long-term relationship with an ancient alien, but in some ways Rose was still very young. “Where can this relationship go, Rose? Nowhere.”

“Who says? Maybe … I don’t know. Maybe he could come with us,” Rose suggested.

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you asked him?”

“Not in so many words,” Donna answered.

“Well, maybe you should.” Rose smiled as if she’d solved the problem. “I can talk to the Doctor, and you can talk to Phil, and maybe he could come along on a couple of trips, just to see how it goes.”

“This isn’t a double-date, Rose, this is asking him to give up his whole life to travel the universe.”

Rose shrugged. “So? You did it. I did it. It’s not impossible, especially if he has his feelings for you to lure him aboard.”

The way she said it, it did start to sound like a reasonable possibility. Finally, Donna nodded. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. Smooth the way with the Doctor, yeah? For the trip back to Earth.”

“Consider it done.” Rose stood off and brushed off her trousers. “I know things seem complicated. I get that. I just think you should focus on the fact that he loves you. Love can be a powerful force, Donna.”

 

***

 

“God, I missed you.”

Donna smiled, combing her fingers through Phil’s hair as they lay in each other’s arms, their heart rates starting to return to normal. “I could tell. I missed you too.”

He kissed her forehead. “How long can you stay?”

Shrugging, Donna pulled away from him a little, feeling the sweat cool on her skin. “Maybe a day or two?”

“Too short,” Phil sighed, rolling over onto his back.

“Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” Donna propped her head up and looked down at him. “I was wondering if you’d like to … if you’d like to come with us for a bit.”

“Come with you?”

“Travel with us, just a few trips. You could see if you like it, and we could spend more time together.”

He sat up against the headboard. “Donna, I have work.”

“Well, you could take some time off. Or we could cheat a bit with the timeline, bring you back right after you left.” She smiled hopefully at him. “You could see the stars. With me.”

Phil’s eyes slid away from hers. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun,” Donna said, hating the wheedling tone in her voice. The last thing she wanted to do was turn into the foolish, needy woman she’d been with Lance.

“Fun? Donna, you’ve been telling me stories about your life for weeks now. And yes, a few of them have sounded fun. But more of them have sounded terrifying.”

“Well, those are fun too, in their own way.”

“Not for me.” Phil got up out of bed and picked up his trousers and pants where they’d been hastily discarded, pulling them on simultaneously. “Donna, I’m not like you. Don’t get me wrong, I admire you _so much_ because you can live that kind of life. All that adventure, all that danger. But I’m not cut out for it.”

“Well how do you know if you don’t at least give it a try?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’m not brave like you, Donna. I’m not fast, I’m not strong. If I tried to do what you do, I’d just end up getting myself killed. Or worse, getting _you_ killed.”

Feeling suddenly self-conscious in her nakedness, Donna threw the covers off and fumbled around for her clothes on the floor. “So you’re just going to sit here in your flat, with your books and your DVDs about the future, about other worlds, other stars, other life forms, but when I give you the opportunity to actually _see_ other worlds, you won’t go?” She buttoned her blouse, anger making her movements jerky. “Because you’re too afraid? What kind of sense does that make?”

His expression turned pained. “I know, I’m sorry. You can call me a coward if you want, but I know myself. I know my limitations.”

They were interrupted by the ringing of Phil’s phone. He went to answer it, and Donna fled to the bathroom, closing the door and leaning against it. What kind of person turns down a chance of a lifetime like that? _You did once,_ she reminded herself. Turning to the sink, she splashed her face with some cold water. That was different. She’d hardly known the Doctor then, she hadn’t had any romantic feelings for him, and he had been so alien – grief-stricken and dark and genocidal. Phil was turning her down in spite of the relationship developing between them, in spite of his feelings for her. Maybe she’d gotten it wrong, she thought, her heart sinking. Maybe his feelings for her just weren’t that strong.

Schooling her features, Donna took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom. She found Phil on the sofa, staring out the window. Just looking at him made a lump form in her throat.

He sensed her and turned around. With a heavy sigh, he looked away again. “I guess I hoped …”

She took a cautious step toward him. “Hoped what?”

“I hoped that if things between us became, you know, serious, that you would come back to London to stay.”

“Oh.” 

“That’s never going to happen, is it?” he asked.

“The TARDIS is my life, Phil. I can’t just –”

“Right. No, sorry, you’re right, I don’t know why I presumed.” He looked away. After a long time, he said, “That doesn’t really leave us anywhere, does it?”

Her heart was pounding. “What do you mean?”

Phil’s shoulders slumped. “I guess a lot of men would be more than happy to see you one weekend every couple of months, have some fantastic sex, and then go back to their regularly scheduled lives. But … but I’m in love with you, Donna, and I want more.”

“You want more but you aren’t willing to change your life one iota to _get_ more. You just want to sit here and have more come to you.”

He stood up. “It’s not like that –”

“Then what is it like?”

His mouth opened, then closed with a click. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe our lives are just too different.”

Donna bit the inside of her cheek to stop her face from crumpling. “I guess I’ll just go, then,” she choked out, turning and blindly reaching for the overnight bag that she had dropped by the door.

“Donna, wait,” Phil said, but she left and slammed the door behind her before he could get anything else out. 

She wiped angrily at tears as she hurried back to the TARDIS. She supposed this was what she got for letting herself get close to someone romantically, Donna thought. She had been perfectly happy before, travelling with Rose and the Doctor. Now she’d upset the status quo and gotten her heart broken in the bargain. Typical male, she mused, wanting her to change her whole life to suit him. 

Donna was relieved to find the console room empty when she let herself into the TARDIS. She knew she should let the Doctor know she was back early so that they could leave, but first she had to get herself under control. Hurrying to her bedroom, Donna closed the door gratefully behind her and dropped onto the bed. She felt like a teenager, crying over a boy in her bedroom. It was shaming, and it only got worse when someone tapped on her door after about a quarter of an hour.

“Donna?” It was the Doctor. She ignored him, hoping he would go away, but no such luck. The door opened a crack. “Donna, are you okay?”

“’M fine,” she called, her voice muffled from where she had her face pressed into the pillow.

Her short-lived relief at hearing the door click closed was dashed when she heard the Doctor’s footsteps approaching her. The bed dipped as he sat down beside her. “Donna, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She sniffled, humiliated that he had found her this way. “Nothing, I just need to be alone for a bit.”

His hand settled on her shoulder. “Donna, if he hurt you, he is going to rue the day that he ever met me.”

Donna couldn’t help but smile. She sat up, pushing her hair off of her face and shaking her head. “It’s nothing like that, no need to get all big scary Time Lord over it.”

“What happened?” He put his arm around her, and Donna gratefully let her head settle onto his shoulder. It was easy to forget sometimes, but the Doctor was still her best mate. She let out a long breath.

“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“ _Meant to be?_ That doesn’t even mean anything.” He squeezed her comfortingly. “Tell me.”

“I asked him if he wanted to travel with us for a bit. Just a few trips, that’s all.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yeah, Rose instructed me that I was to be welcoming and not rude.”

Donna chuckled a tiny laugh, then sobered. “He said he wasn’t cut out for this kind of life. He won’t come.”

“Well, what use do you have for him, then?” the Doctor said with exaggerated cheer. “Sounds to me like he’s completely wrong for you in every way. It’s like I said, Donna, he’s not good enough for someone as brilliant as you.”

“Yes, but … how many people _are_ cut out for this, Doctor? Not many, I’d bet. What are the odds that I’m ever going to find a man as wonderful as Phil who is willing to share this life with me?” She met his eyes, and the Doctor didn’t say anything. “That’s what I thought. I can have the universe, but I can’t have someone to love me.”

“ _I_ love you,” the Doctor said with a half-smile.

Donna hugged him, trying to hold back another deluge of tears. “I love you too, dumbo, but it’s not the same, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” the Doctor admitted. 

“And at least he was honest, yeah? He didn’t try to please me by pretending to be someone he’s not.” 

“I guess that’s true. But Donna, you’re someone who loves adventure; you love the rush of adrenaline, the thrill of running for your life.”

“I don’t, actually.” She hadn’t even been aware that those words were going to come out of her mouth until they did, and she almost gasped.

The Doctor was frowning at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s Rose that loves those things. I love seeing new planets, the past, the future. All of that is brilliant. I put up with the danger and all the rest of it because we help people. We save lives, and that’s fantastic. But if you think I get a charge out of the danger, I don’t. I don’t love that part. Maybe I did once, I don’t know. Now I think it mostly makes me tired.”

The Doctor looked crestfallen. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

“That’s because it doesn’t matter. On balance, I still love travelling with you.” She hugged him. “I just don’t know if I want to lose Phil.”

The Doctor pulled away and ran his hands over his face. “Donna, is this someone who can make you happy? Truly happy, for the rest of your life?”

She shrugged. “It’s a little soon to know that, isn’t it? But … maybe.”

“I hate the idea of losing you.” 

“I know. And I haven’t decided anything yet. No cleaning out my room just yet, got it, spaceman?”

The Doctor returned her hug with one of his own. “You’ll always have a place on this TARDIS, Donna. For as long as you live.”


	8. All Good Things

Donna struggled against the ropes that were securely tied around her wrists. Restraining herself from screaming in frustration, she felt the pad of Rose’s palm brush back and forth across her own as she worked to get them free. They sat back to back on the floor of a cave, and Donna could feel the damp seeping through her clothes to her skin.

“Stop fidgeting,” Rose said through gritted teeth. “I’m about halfway through the rope and I don’t want to cut you by accident.” Rose was awkwardly sawing at the bindings that tied them together with a piece of scrap metal that she’d picked up from the floor with her feet.

“Where the hell is the Doctor?” Donna whispered. 

“I don’t know, but I’m not waiting around for him to come to our rescue,” Rose said.

“What do you think they’ll do to us?” Donna asked. The men who had captured them – dirty, brutish men – had leered with expressions that made Donna shudder. She tried not to imagine what they must have been thinking.

“I’d rather not contemplate it,” Rose answered. Her voice betrayed a fear that Rose didn’t often let show, and that frightened Donna even more. She began pulling at the ropes behind her back again, swallowing bile that rose into her throat.

“Almost … got it … there!” Rose said as Donna felt the ropes give. They pulled their hands loose and went to work on the restraints on their feet. As Donna fumbled with the knots, she heard the faint echo of voices coming down one of tunnels that branched from where they were being held. “Hurry,” Rose said grimly.

“I _am_.” Donna fought against the panic that she could feel rising in her chest. Her vision narrowed and everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. Rose came over and helped her, getting the ropes the rest of the way off.

“Run!” Rose shouted, pulling Donna to her feet. The men were just behind them now, and Donna prayed that the tunnel Rose picked would lead them out and not deeper into a trap.

What was probably only a couple of minutes later but felt like an eternity, Donna finally saw the opening to the cave up ahead. Their pursuers were still on their heels, but Rose and Donna were faster. The barrelled out into the open air and almost collided with the Doctor. He soniced something and rocks crashed down into the entrance to the tunnel, preventing anyone from following them easily. “Come on!” he shouted.

Back in the TARDIS, Donna collapsed on the jump seat. “I think I’m getting to old for this,” she gasped.

The Doctor smirked. “I think the line is, ‘I’m too old for this shit.’” He looked between Rose and Donna’s gaping mouths. “What? _Lethal Weapon_? You’ve never seen …?” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Never mind. Clearly there are cavernous holes in your knowledge when it comes to the buddy cop movie genre.” He threw a lever on the console and released the hand break with a grin. “Onward, then!”

Donna closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Rose was joking and flirting with the Doctor already, their near-miss seemingly already forgotten. She knew it might not be – Rose did struggle with trauma from their experiences sometimes. Still, Donna thought again of her conversation with the Doctor a few days before. Perhaps she wasn’t as cut out for this life as she used to be. Or was she just trying to convince herself of that fact so that contemplating leaving wouldn’t seem so horrible?

Her spiralling thoughts were interrupted by the trill of her mobile phone. Donna pulled it out and saw her mum’s number on the screen. With a put-upon sigh, she answered. 

“Donna?”

“What do you need, mum?”

“It’s Dad. He’s in hospital.”

 

*** 

 

Her grandfather’s hand squeezed hers as she sat at his bedside. “Don’t look so down in the mouth, Donna. I’m gonna be fine.”

“Chest pains, Granddad. I think you should take it a little more seriously.”

“They said it wasn’t a heart attack,” he said stubbornly.

“They also said that you have an increased risk of having a heart attack later,” Donna said, “so zip it.”

Wilf laughed, reaching up with a slightly shaky hand to touch Donna’s cheek. “It _is_ good to see you, even under these circumstances. How are you?”

Donna shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Her grandfather shook his head. “You never could lie to me, you know. What happened with that bloke you were seeing?”

“Do we have to talk about that?” Donna asked with a groan, “because I’d much rather get back to the topic of your angina.”

“If he did something to hurt you, I want to hear about it, miss.”

“You sound like the Doctor. No, it’s nothing like that. We just aren’t … I don’t know.” Donna fingered her mobile phone in her pocket. “He called a couple of days ago, but I let it go to voice mail.”

“Why? You don’t like him any more?”

“No, I like him,” she sighed.

“What did he say?” Her grandfather’s gaze was alert and piercing. He wasn’t going to let it drop.

“He wants to see me and talk,” she admitted.

“Well, don’t you think you should see him, then? Hear what he has to say?”

“I don’t know,” Donna said.

“Do it because I asked you to. A last request from your dying grandfather,” he moaned dramatically.

“You aren’t dying.”

“Aha! You admit it.” He gave her a smug grin. “So did they say when I could go home?”

 

*** 

 

“Hi.”

“You came,” Phil said. He stood in the doorway to his flat, looking relieved.

“Well, yeah. You asked me to come and I agreed, remember?” Donna said, referencing their brief and awkward phone call from half an hour before. She watched him for a moment. “Can I come in?” she finally asked.

“Oh! Yes, of course.” He stood aside and Donna walked into his flat, her back stiff. He’d said he had things to say, and she’d decided to let him say them. Didn’t make it any easier to look at him, her mind wandering against her will to the last time they’d made love.

“Do you want to sit down? Do you want coffee or tea or …”

“No, nothing. What did you want to tell me?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Right. Well, I did some thinking. A lot of thinking.” He paced across the room, then stopped and met her eyes. “I missed you.”

Donna softened. “I missed you too.”

“And I … that is, what I wanted to say is …” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I made a mistake before, saying I wouldn’t go with you. I’ll learn to overcome my fears if the alternative is losing you.”

It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say at all. “You’ll travel with me. Even though you don’t really want to.”

Phil took a tentative step toward her. “What I want is to be with you. The rest of it, I’ll figure out as I go along.” He grimaced. “I’m probably being too forward, aren’t I? This is too much.”

“No,” she said. “No, forward is good.”

“I really want to kiss you right now, is that all right?” he asked.

Donna grinned at him. “Wondered what the hell you were waiting on, dumbo.”

They met in the middle of the room in a tight embrace, mouths crashing together desperately. “I’m sorry,” he whispered between kisses. “I can’t believe I let you walk out of here.”

“Always knew you were daft,” Donna said as she pulled his shirt from his trousers and started to work the buttons.

“That’s me. Completely and utterly daft.” His mouth fell to her neck, sucking and biting. Donna hissed and threw her head back. “I need you,” he said into her skin, his hands running down her back and pulling her close against him.

“Yes,” she whispered, leading him into the bedroom. They undressed clumsily, reluctant to stop kissing long enough to get their clothes off. When she had him naked, Donna pushed him onto the bed, and he laughed with sheer joy as he bounced on the mattress. 

When she joined him under the covers their silliness fell away, replaced with pure desire and relief at being back together. Their lovemaking was hurried, as the overwhelming emotion had both of them rushing toward completion. Donna cried out wordlessly when she came, letting her head fall back as she rode him. _I love you_ , she thought as she watched his face contort with his own climax. 

Phil’s hands slid up her sides and he eased her down next to him on the bed, cradling her in his arms. He was panting, his quick exhales coming out as soft moans. His fingers threaded into her hair and he kissed her cheek gently. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”

“Did you mean what you said? You’d really leave your life behind to come travel with me?” Donna asked.

Phil nodded.

“That’s a bit mad, you know.”

“Hey! _You_ asked _me_ , remember?” he protested with a laugh.

“I know, I know.” Donna ran her hand up his arm. “Listen, Phil … don’t think I won’t take you up on your offer in the future, but …”

His face fell. “You don’t want me to come?”

“No, that’s not what I meant!” she reassured him quickly. “Of course I want you to come. It’s just that I’m thinking of staying in London for a little while.”

“Why? I mean, you don’t have to because of me. It wasn’t fair of me to expect—”

“It’s not just you. For one thing, my grandfather is ill – not seriously, but he’s getting on in years and I want to spend more time with him. For another …” She paused and sighed. “I think I need a rest from all the running for my life, although perhaps not permanently. And yes, in the meantime you and I can date each other properly.”

“Well, that does sound like a good plan,” he said, squeezing her into a hug. “But don’t let me off the hook. If you want to go back, I’ll go with you. I promise.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, and kissed him.

 

_*~* Six months later *~*_

Donna pushed down on her suitcase with all of her weight and pulled the zip closed. She heaved it off the bed and next to the massive collection of suitcases, shopping bags, and other detritus from her years on the TARDIS. She sat down on the bed just as Rose poked her head through the door.

“How goes the packing?” Rose asked.

“Done,” Donna said.

Rose eyed the pile of Donna’s belongings. “Blimey.” She walked over and sat down next to Donna, bumping their shoulders together. “And how are you holding up?”

“I’ve managed to only cry twice during the packing process,” Donna said. “But I am looking forward to having only one address. Between officially living at my mum’s, spending more and more nights at Phil’s, and still having my room here on the TARDIS, it’s a wonder that I ever managed to find anything when I needed it.”

“You’re going to have us over to the new place soon, yeah?”

“As soon as Phil and I are moved in, I promise you and the Doctor will be our first houseguests.”

Donna saw Rose’s eyes brighten with unshed tears. “I can’t believe you’re going to be gone. Who am I going to talk to when the Doctor’s being a berk?”

“You’ll just have to call me, then I’ll call him and yell at him for you. You’ll hardly know I’m gone. Besides, now you can have sex all over the TARDIS without worrying about anyone walking in on you.”

“I’ll admit, the thought had occurred,” Rose said, smiling a watery smile, and then her tears spilled over. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she said as she pulled Donna into a hug.

“Stop it, you’re gonna get me started again,” Donna said. “You’ll visit. We’ll see each other.”

“Won’t be the same,” came Rose’s muffled voice. 

It wouldn’t, of course. “You take care of yourself, yeah? Keep out of trouble.” Rose pulled back and looked at her with wide eyes, and then they both burst into hysterical laughter.

The Doctor found them giggling and wiping at tears a few minutes later. “Now that’s what I call déjà vu,” he said. “This is the way I found you together on Rose’s first week back on the TARDIS, do you remember?”

After another hug, Rose slipped out of the room, leaving Donna alone with the Doctor.

“Sure you won’t change your mind?” he asked, his hands in his pockets.

Donna smirked at him. “It’s a little late to be asking that, don’t you think? No, this is the right thing.”

“I’m still not convinced this Phil idiot is good enough for you,” the Doctor said, rocking back and forth on his heels, the tiniest of smiles hinting that he was joking.

“Well, I _know_ you’re not good enough for Rose, but you don’t see me convincing her to leave you.”

The Doctor barked out a laugh. “Fair point.”

“Come here and give me a hug, you big dunce.”

They held each other quietly for a few moments. “I hate goodbyes,” the Doctor muttered.

“It’s a good thing this isn’t goodbye, then. You’re going to visit me, mister,” she said, wiping away tears and then poking him in the chest, “and if you don’t, I’ll find you and regenerate you.”

“Okay,” he said with a grin.

“I thought I was going to travel with you forever,” she said, “but I guess my priorities have shifted. I’m really looking forward to having a home on solid ground that’s the same size on the inside as the outside. Can you believe it?”

“It surpasses understanding.” His wide, brown eyes searched hers. “You made me better, Donna Noble. Thank you for travelling with me.”

“I’ll never forget a moment of it.”

The Doctor sighed. “Don’t spend too much time looking backward, Donna. You’ve got a new adventure before you. Enjoy it. Enjoy your future; it’s going to be fantastic.”

“Is that something you can see in the timeline?” she asked.

He smiled and put his arm around her, walking her toward the console room. “Don’t need to see it. I know it because I know _you_ , Donna. How could your life be anything but brilliant?”

 

_END_


End file.
